


Murder at the Rink

by feeisamarshmallow



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: A fair bit of angst, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst with a Happy Ending, But with a happy ending, Canadian setting, Case Fic, F/M, Hockey AU, Romance, Sort Of, Teen Sleuth AU, slowburn, what am i doing???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28960215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feeisamarshmallow/pseuds/feeisamarshmallow
Summary: A murder shakes a small hockey town in Canada just as the Under 18 hockey team is advancing to the provincial finals. Many people know what happened, but only two teens might be brave enough to expose the truth. Together they uncover a web of sabotage, prejudice, and cover-ups. And if they don’t let the corruption of their town get the better of them, they just might fall in love, too.Or, Amy is a studious high school student. Jake is a local teenage hockey star. They team up to solve a crime, as they do.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 61
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Working through my complicated feelings about hockey and my home through writing weird niche b99 fic? It's more likely than you think. 
> 
> But seriously, this is a fic I've worked on for a long time, born from a love of hockey and the kid/teen sleuth novels that raised me, and I'm really excited to share it. This fic is finished, so rest assured I will post the whole thing. I think I'll try to post a chapter every two weeks or so, but I don't have a strict update schedule. 
> 
> Warning for racism and general discrimination. It's a noir-inspired, corrupt town so there are explorations of some serious topics. Also warning for inappropriate language.
> 
> Thanks to the wonderful [MediumSizedEvil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MediumSizedEvil/pseuds/MediumSizedEvil) for the beta.

The arena smells like lemon cleaner and greasy fries. The scent of the floor polish and the waft from the concession stand seem to converge right where Amy is sitting in the lobby by the door. It’s making her hungry. But she has half an hour before her late morning shift ends and she can’t leave the tickets or the cashbox unattended.

Amy shifts in her seat, leaning her elbows against the desk in front of her, and tries to focus on reading her biology textbook. She tunes out the children running around behind her and the idle chatter of spectators standing around the corner, who are choosing to watch the hockey game through the plexiglass windows instead of inside the rink. Usually once the game starts Amy has a few moments of quiet to herself before she has to start counting up the money in the cashbox, but today the Althea Community Arena is abuzz with the excitement of the Under-18 provincial finals.

She reads a few sentences before the clunk of the door opening pulls her from her studies. A rush of cold air follows the man in—Amy recognizes him as the owner of the local plumbing business. His greying mustache always reminds her of playing Super Mario with her brothers.

“It’s a cold one out today.” The man readjusts his baseball hat and a sprinkle of snow falls on the tiled arena lobby.

“It is.” Amy makes her voice sound more interested than she feels. “Is it still snowing?”

“Just stoppin’.” He fishes around in his jeans pocket with one hand and pulls out a few coins. “How’s Dr. Santiago doing?”

“He’s good.” She gives a tight-lipped smile as the man sets three dollars in loonies on the desk. Amy grabs the coins, puts them in her cashbox, and rips off a green ticket from the roll sitting next to her textbook.

“Have I missed much?” He asks as he pockets the ticket.

“The game just started.”

The man nods, satisfied, and walks away to join the crowd of spectators inside the rink.

Amy sighs once he was out of earshot, closes up her textbook, and starts counting the coins into neat piles. The provincial finals have brought in a much larger crowd than usual U18 games. She’s just finishing balancing the day’s ticket sales when her phone vibrates on the desk—Kylie wants Amy to join her at the game.

* * *

The cold air sticks to the back of her throat as Amy stands at the top of the bleachers in the rink, searching for Kylie’s blond hair in the crowd of spectators. If she doesn’t eat her fries fast, they’re going to grow cold and limp. She spots Kylie just as one of the Althea players on the ice checks an opposing Wimborne player into the boards, and the resounding whump is followed by enthusiastic cheering from the home team.

“I can’t stay long. I have a bio test on Monday.” Amy says as she sits down next to Kylie.

“It’s only Saturday. You have all of tomorrow to study for your test.” Kylie teases, reaching over to steal a fry from Amy’s container.

“Do you even care about hockey?” Amy asks.

“No, do you?”

“I don’t care about Althea boys hockey, but I wasn’t the one who wanted to come to the game in the first place.”

“I don’t care about hockey, but I do care about hockey players.” Kylie gives her a knowing look and Amy notices that she’s done her makeup—pink eyeshadow and gobs of mascara.

“Ew do you still have a crush on Scully?”

Kylie nods, indignant. “Norman is cute. And he seems nice.”

“He’s dumb, you’re mistaking that for nice.” Amy punctuates her statement with a fry before popping it into her mouth.

“Well I need someone to help me get over Matt.”

“Whatever, it’s your life.”

Kylie laughs, which is why Amy appreciates her friendship. Kylie can take good-natured teasing as well as any of Amy’s seven brothers. But she’s serious and committed where it truly counts: as a fellow member of the Reach for Top trivia team and as Amy’s best friend.

Her laughter is quickly drowned out by the crowd, though, because the Althea Avalanche have the puck. The winger races through the neutral zone, outmanoeuvring the opposing man and giving his team a three-on-two chance. The crows cheers as the winger fakes a shot, and passes it straight across in front of the goalie to his teammate on the other side, who times his shot perfectly and launches the puck into the top corner of the net.

The Althea crowd is on their feet immediately. 1-0 for the home team. The goal scorer—Peralta according to his jersey—celebrates wildly. He points at the crowd and then turns around to taunt the other team, before skating past his own team’s bench, knocking gloves with each player. The excitement is palpable in the air. Amy may not care for the local boys hockey team—the Canadian women’s team is another story—but she has to admit that hockey is exciting no matter who is playing.

“What about you?” Kylie says after the crowd has quieted down a little. “You haven’t dated anyone since Teddy, like, two years ago?”

“Ugh don’t remind me about Teddy.” Amy rolls her eyes.

On the ice, the referee drops the puck at centre ice and the play resumes after the goal. As the opposing team gets possession of the puck a disembodied voice announces the goal over the loudspeaker. Minor hockey games don’t usually have announcers, but the town has gone all out in excitement for the provincial finals.

“Goal scored by number 9, Jake Peralta, for the Althea Avalanche. Assisted by number 42, Charles Boyle.”

The crowd cheers again. In front of Amy, two elementary school-aged children holler and hold up a homemade sign painted with the Althea logo, which itself is ripped off the NHL Avalanche logo. Beside Kylie sit two very enthusiastic grandparents with the red and blue Althea colours painted on their cheeks.

“What about Jake Peralta?” Kylie asks, gesturing towards the ice where Jake, only identifiable by the number 9 on his jersey, skates up the ice.

“What about him?” Amy says.

Kylie raises her eyebrows.

“No. He’s cocky and a show-off and I don’t even know him that well.” Amy crosses her arms, sticking her hands in her armpits for warmth.

“Well maybe you should get to know him. We’ve only gone to school with him since kindergarten.”

“You’re forgetting that I moved here in Grade One.”

“Right from New Jersey.” Kylie says.

“The one and only,” Amy replies.

* * *

Althea wins the game, which puts them up two games to one in their best of five finals series. The crowd pours out of the rink and into the area lobby, riding the high of the victory. Parents holding toddlers in one arm and takeaway coffee cups in the other. Farmers wearing overalls and plaid work coats. Gaggles of teens laughing and hanging off each other’s arms, their hair long and pin-straight. Kylie goes to hang out in the hallway by the dressing rooms in hopes of running into Scully, but Amy gives the excuse of her upcoming biology test and slips out the door ahead of the swell of people.

The arena maintenance man—Sam—holds the door for her as she leaves. “Have a good afternoon Miss Santiago.”

“Thanks, you too,” she replies.

Sam is always oddly formal and talks in a high-pitched, pinched kind of voice. He walks with a limp and keeps his hair long and slicked back into a low ponytail. The adults tolerate Sam well enough, if only because they’re so used to his presence, but his obvious quirks attract merciless teasing from the teenagers and children. Amy always feels a little bad for Sam. She’s gotten to know him as she worked selling tickets to minor hockey games and he mopped the arena lobby floor next to her. He seems like a good guy, just a little odd.

But in Althea, a little odd is enough to put you on the outside. Amy waits for a pickup truck to pass before she crosses the road in front of the arena. There are a few snowflakes drifting throughout the air. The ground is churned up and muddy, but frozen from the recent cold spell. The weather can never make up its mind in March in Ontario. Amy pulls her tuque down low on her head and shoves her hands deep into her winter coat pocket as she braces to face the wind on her ten-minute walk home.

She passes the gas station and Tim Hortons, giving a small tight-lipped smil to the teenage attendant that she knows from school. Then come a row of century-old homes, red and yellow brick with towering, naked maples in their front yards. She turns on the street by the variety store, grateful for the reprieve from the wind, and walks a few metres to her family home: A tall, two-storey Victorian era house. The family van is in the driveway, but her dad’s car is gone, which means he must be at his medical practice this afternoon.

When Amy enters through the front door her glasses immediately fog up and she is met with the warm aroma of _sofrito_. Her mom likes to cook on Saturdays when she has the day off. Although she is the other half of her husband’s family practice, she doesn’t work on weekends if she can help it.

“How was work, _mija_?” Camilla Santiago asks as Amy sheds her coat and boots and walks into the kitchen.

“Fine, mom. Busy—it’s the finals.” 

“I remember when David was in the finals, the whole town came. He scored the winning goal.” Camilla stirs the tomatoes into the pan on the stove.

Amy doesn’t say anything but her mom continues, “He was MVP on his team that year. The star player.” 

“I know mom. I was there. I was the MVP on my team that year, too.”

Camilla nods slightly, before taste-testing her cooking. Amy rolls her eyes while her mom’s attention is directed elsewhere.

“Is David coming home this weekend?”

“ _Si_ , he’ll be here for dinner. He has to finish a project first. He tells me he’s top of his class.”

Amy pretends not to have heard her mom as she climbs the stairs to her room. The house creaks in the winter wind and branches hit Amy’s window. She’s not sure whether the house has gotten louder as it aged, or whether she’s just able to hear the sounds now that the house isn’t filled to the brim with Santiago children. David, Mateo, Carlos and Leo are all away at university. Daniel and Miguel are married now. It feels empty now that it’s only her and her brother Victor living at home. Amy grabs her headphones to drown out the noise and settles in to study for her test.

* * *

The sky is just beginning to lighten, turning a clear, pale grey as Jake pulls his mom’s station wagon into the arena parking lot. He thinks that it’s extra cruel to have a practice the morning after one of their finals games—that they won no less! He doesn’t need extra practice, and he sure could’ve used an extra few hours in bed. Coach Kelly is notorious for pushing his team hard. Maybe even too hard, but it’s difficult to argue with back-to-back runs to the provincial finals.

But as Jake turns the corner to park around back, he notices red and blue flashing lights punctuating the sky. There’s an ambulance parked by the zamboni exit. The fire rescue truck is pulled up behind it, and a few firemen are milling around—Jake recognizes his neighbour and his shop teacher among them.

He parks his car, rushing to grab his bag and sticks from the trunk before entering the arena. His team is huddled around in the lobby, even though the dressing rooms are usually unlocked by now. Rosa looks more standoffish than usual, standing by the window with her back towards the group, tuque pulled low, gripping a cheap cup of coffee but not drinking it.

Charles ambushes Jake almost immediately.

“Jake, it’s horrible.”

“What’s up, bud?” Jake gives him a cool nod, trying to hide the nerves he feels growing in his stomach.

“You know Sam?

“Of course I know Sam. Goofy Old Sam The Clean-up Man.”

Jake is expecting Charles to respond with the second half of their made-up chant, the same way he has for the nearly ten years of their friendship, but instead Charles clears his throat, as if he’s choked.

“Sam’s dead.”

“What?”

It’s at that moment that Keith “The Vulture” Pembroke joins them, grabbing Jake and putting him in a headlock with a little too much strength.

“Knock it off man.” What’s your problem?” Jake twists out of The Vulture’s grip. He knows he’s supposed to go along with it, but The Vulture always evokes a low level sense of dread and hatred in Jake, even if he’s one of their team’s leading scorer (and only because he sits by the net cherry-picking).

“I don’t have a problem, Peralta. Sam’s fucking dead!” The Vulture looks downright gleeful at the prospect, his blue-grey eyes glinting and his receding hair greased back down around his ears.

Jake says nothing, but The Vulture keeps goading him.

“C’mon Peralta.” He reaches out to punch Jake’s arm. “Don’t tell me your gonna mourn that fuckin' idiot. With his mop and his fuckin' stupid rules.”

“He was just doing his job,” Jake mumbles.

“What’s that Peralta?” The Vulture takes a step too close, eye to eye with Jake.

With anyone else on the team, Jake would rise to the challenge. After all, he was their best centreman and most of the boys respected that. But The Vulture was nasty—to both his own and opposing teammates—and it was never worth the fight.

“Nothing.” Jake says, but he stays his ground and keeps eye contact.

By this time The Vulture has drawn the rest of the team over to him. The Vulture opens his mouth to speak again, when Stevie Schillens cuts in.

“Yeah if you call trying to fucking sabotage us, tryin’ to get us kicked outta the finals for fuckin’ harrasin’ some kids or some shit _doing his job_.”

Stevie is taller than The Vulture—he’s the tallest on the team—but has only a fraction of The Vulture’s scary intensity. He’s good looking, with even light brown skin and hair cropped short against his head. He’s charming, even a little cunning, but not scary. To be honest, Jake can never truly get a read on Stevie. One minute they’re friends, the next minute Stevie’s trying to suck up to The Vulture. Jake believes that Stevie’s a good guy, but it doesn’t sit right hearing him rag on Sam. 

“I heard he was murdered ‘cause he uncovered _us_ sabotaging the other team!” Hitch adds, looking a little too proud that he has something interesting—or at least provocative—to add to the conversation.

Jake is about to dismiss Hitch, who has never once had an intelligent thought flit through his brain, and who is only a half-decent defenceman at best, when he notices The Vulture’s reaction. He looks behind the group, down the hallway where the paramedics, firemen, and now police, are still milling around. Then he reaches up and scratches his face nervously. The Vulture doesn’t say anything but Stevie does.

“Hitch—shut up, you fucking idiot.” His tone is lighthearted, like he’s just chirping him, but Stevie’s brown eyes are wide and worried.

“Say anything what? He was gonna get us kicked outta the finals. Someone had to shut up that—” 

“Wait,” Charles exclaims. “Did you guys,” he drops his voice to a whisper, “ _murder_ Sam?”

Jake feels his stomach drop out from under him. His legs turn to jelly and his mouth goes dry. 

“Not us, dummy. Our parents. Don’t worry, the cops won’t give us any trouble.” Hitch says. He looks untroubled. 

Hitch is a good looking guy, with his blonde hair swept behind his ears in a perfect flow, blue eyes, and ropey, muscular arms. Jake always figured that his looks meant he never had to question his place on the team, or in life. Jake, on the other hand, has been shouldering taunts about his nose and his short stature for years, and has learned to lean into them. Stevie gets it worse than all of them, with racist remarks thrown at him when the refs aren’t listening. Mostly from the opposing team, but once even from The Vulture himself. 

Up until this moment, The Vulture has been quiet. But then he explodes and punches Hitch in the shoulder, hard.

“You. Fucking. Idiot.” He says under his breath.

At that moment, someone clears their breath from behind the group. It’s Coach Kelly.

* * *

“If you say a word it will destroy us, and that means I’ll destroy you. Understand?” Coach Kelly takes a minute to make eye contact with each player sitting in around the perimeter of the dressing room. He looks the same as always—tall, white hair a little fluffy on top, cold blue eyes, a perpetual clipboard tucked under his armpit.

Jake vaguely registers that Rosa’s not here, likely changing in the women’s dressing room since she’s the only girl on the “boys” U18 team. He hopes that means she doesn’t know anything about this. That she has no idea that a group of parents were first sabotaging their opponents to ensure their repeat run to the provincial finals, and then that they murdered Sam when he found out. 

The dressing room is dead silent, except for the creaking wood every time one of the players shifts and the rush of water running through the pipes. It smells like sweat, but Jake swears he can also smell the scent of blood. He hears a rushing in his ears as he grips the bench until his fingers turn numb, desperately hoping he won’t faint. Charles looks similarly stricken, his skin pale and his brown eyes fixed somewhere past Coach Kelly’s shoulder.

There’s a beat, and then Coach Kelly claps his hands. “Alright boys, we got a lotta work to do today and we’ve lost some time. Get dressed and don’t waste my time. I want you on the ice warming up in 5 minutes.”

Jake’s not sure how he’s going to get through the practice. He almost can’t wrap his head around what has just happened. It doesn’t feel real. Like he’s putting someone else’s skates on someone else’s feet. Pulling on someone else’s jersey and snapping on someone else’s helmet. So he does the only thing he knows how to do: He steps onto the ice and pushes the memory deep down inside of him until he can’t reach it anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me what you think! Or come say hi on tumblr [@feeisamarshmallow](https://feeisamarshmallow.tumblr.com/).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy and Jake cross paths, and react to the news of Sam's death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the lovely feedback and interest on my last chapter. It means so much to me. Thanks to @MediumSizedEvil for the beta, and @suspended-in-gaffa for the impeccable advice.

Amy wakes up to the sounds of her parents getting ready. For a few seconds she’s disoriented, and then she remembers the news of Sam’s death and even though she didn’t know him that well, it makes her heart feel heavy. Her dad’s voice bounces off the walls, up the staircase, and into her room. It’s still dark out, and she figures she has a few minutes before her own alarm goes off. Amy groans and ducks her head under the pillow, but it still doesn’t block out her father’s deep tenor. Instead she pulls herself out of bed, slips on clothes, and stuffs her books into her backpack. She’s lugging her bag and her French horn down the stairs, determined to go about her day as normal, when something her father says stops her.

“I told him I’d been in this country ten years. And The States for twenty years before that!” He says in Spanish.

“He knows that, _mi amor_.”

“I know he does! I play golf with him every summer. I like him, Camilla! That’s why I just can’t…” her father’s voice trails off, and Camilla says something Amy doesn’t catch.

“He said it as a joke, you know, ‘why don’t you just go back to Cuba?’” Victor continues. “But I could tell, I could tell it was the kind of joke that had weight behind it.”

“What did he say, when you told him you were a citizen?”

“What did he say? He says it was a joke. You know how it works in this town.”

“Victor, shh! You know Amy will be awake soon.”

“Do you think Amy doesn’t know? The way they see us? We are their friends until we say something they don’t like. Until I give my friend, _a man who I admire_ , sound medical advice and he tells me to go back to a country I barely even remember. Camilla, sometimes I get tired of this country and the politeness and things that it hides.”

“I know Victor. I know.”

“I told him I was joking too.” Amy’s dad says, quieter. “And then that was that. He invited me to go golfing with him next month once the courses dry out.”

On the stairs, in the dark, Amy stays completely still, careful to not shift her weight and let the creaking stairs betray her presence. But what she really wants to do is march straight out the front door and find Mr. Cassen—who she’s sure her father is talking about—and yell at him until he never tries to make a so-called joke again. She doesn’t care that he probably doesn’t mean it. That he clearly still thinks of her father as a friend. Victor always puts his patient’s ease above anything else, and Amy admires the pragmatism in his approach. But if having seven older brothers has taught her anything, it’s that sometimes you have to fight for what you deserve.

Amy balls up her fists in her pockets, takes a few deep breaths, and then enters the kitchen to get breakfast.

* * *

She’s still seething as she waits at the corner for the school bus, grateful for it on a day like this. Even a few metres closer to the school and she wouldn’t qualify for bussing. It’s drizzling something halfway between rain and snow, and Amy’s toes tingle with the cold. She stomps her feet with a little too much force in a bid to warm them up.

She takes an empty seat on the school bus and jams her headphones in her ears, eager to block out the world. She turns up the volume on her ipod until she can’t hear anything but Adele’s soulful voice, and is just about to close her eyes when she notices something going on in the seat in front of her, on the opposite side of the aisle.

A girl is sitting in the seat and, like Amy, has her knees pressed up against the seat and headphones in. She has mousy brown hair that’s gone a little frizzy from the precipitation, an oversized grey hoodie, and knock-off ugg boots. Amy’s pretty sure her name is Sarah, or Stephanie, or something with an S, and that she’s a grade nine student. She seems shy. At least, she never says a word on the bus.

But today, some guy is harassing her. Amy recognizes him immediately from working at the arena. Tall, still a touch of pale baby fat on his cheeks, with almost shocking white-blond hair. Colin McMann, she thinks. He’s also a grade nine, and whenever she’s working he always gives her a head nod that feels a little too flirty for her liking. Colin takes a seat next to Sarah, sitting deliberately too close, almost on top of her. He grabs the headphones from her ears, ripping them from her phone and holds them above her head, too high for her to reach.

“Give them back.” Sarah says.

“Huh.” Colin cups his hand around his ear, leaning into Sarah’s space.

“I said, give them back.” Sarah repeats with more force.

“Gimme a kiss and they’re yours Sar.”

By this time, Amy has taken her own headphones from her ears. She leans forward in her seat, mouth open and ready to say something.

Colin makes kissy noises, while Sarah averts her eyes, staring resolutely at the floor. A few of Colin’s friends have gathered around. They’re identical in their hockey jackets and hats. But she vaguely recognizes all of them as grade nine students.

Colin gets a few laughs with his kissing schtick, but once they die down he leans over Sarah, like he’s actually going to plant one on her, and Amy snaps. She jumps up from her own seat, grabs Colin by the hood of his jacket and pulls him back.

“Woah, what the fuck?” he exclaims.

Amy doesn’t respond, instead ripping Sarah’s headphones out of his hand. Sarah relaxes her shoulders and breaths out when Amy hands her back her headphones.

“Did you not hear her?” Amy says to Colin. “Leave her alone.”

“Woahhh, angry much?” Colin backs up, posturing, assimilating into the group of his friends gathered behind him.

“You’re harassing her. Just stop,” Amy says.

Amy’s just going to leave it at that. But then Colin speaks again.

“Sorry I didn’t know we had the fucking harassment police on the bus.” He rolls his eyes.

Amy feels her hands clench at her sides again, and she’s had enough. She takes a step towards Colin, feeling all of the five inches of height he has on her.

“I wasn’t going to report you, but you’re being an asshole. And now I’m going to make you regret it.”

“Ohhh dude! You made her so angry.” One of Colin’s friends laughs.

“Whatever. Like I’ll actually get in trouble for doing nothing.” Colin turns around and sits back in his seat.

The bus turns into the high school, and Amy flops back down in her seat, breathing hard. She gathers up her bag and her French horn, and marches off the bus in a beeline towards the office. She almost doesn’t hear someone calling her name behind her.

“Amy!”

She turns around and sees Jake Peralta running down the steps of their bus and towards her on the sidewalk outside the school. Amy’s just about had it with hockey bros this morning, well really with this whole town, and so she gives Jake a curt, “What?”

She’s surprised to see that he looks uncertain. His curls have come loose with the motion of running, or because of the rain, and they’re springing off his head at random angles. He looks around them—no one else is in earshot—and rocks back and forth on his feet before speaking.

“So believe it or, Colin’s brother is actually an even bigger jerk than he is.”

“Wow, I can’t imagine.” Amy’s tone is flat.

There’s a pause, and Amy goes to walk away.

“Wait—what I actually wanted to say is...Colin is a jerk and you should report him and…” Jake drops his voice, “I’ll be a witness if you need one.

Amy does a double-take. She doesn’t know what she was expecting Jake to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. The rain has started to pick up, and it’s plastering Jake’s curls to his head in a way that she almost finds endearing. He maintains eye contact with her, and suddenly Amy’s wondering why she’s never noticed how pretty his eyes are, all soft and warm brown.

“Thanks. I’ll let you know I guess.”

Jake nods. They both turn to walk into the school, when Amy blurts out, “It was a nice goal you scored this weekend.”

It’s Jake’s turn to look surprised. He stops dead in his tracks in front of the steps leading up to the two-story, red brick building.

“You watched the game,” he says.

Amy nods. “Bar down. Nice and flashy.”

That makes Jake grin. It’s goofy and almost a little sweet. “It’s ‘cause I’m the best.”

“Whatever you say.” Amy laughs.

They start walking again, up the steps to the school and in through the front doors.

“Do you play?”

“I did. I quit a few years ago to focus on school and music. Plus I got tired of the drama.”

She’s not sure why, but the mention of drama has him looking spooked all over again. His eyes go wide and he starts looking over his shoulder again. But before she can say anything, he turns down a hallway, and as he calls to her over his shoulder, he looks normal again.

“My locker’s this way. See you around, Santiago! Can I call you Santiago?”

She rolls her eyes, and then shrugs. Why not? As far as hockey guys go, it seems like Jake is at least not the worst.

* * *

Amy waits for nearly her whole spare period to talk to the principal about Colin. She sits on a scratchy upholstered chair next to the secretary and watches the flow of people come in and out of the office, mostly signing in late or leaving early. Above her a fluorescent light buzzes and every time the secretary moves she unleashes a wave of her floral-scented perfume.

Althea District Secondary School is an old building that has had multiple additions over the years, but the core building was built in the 40s. It’s somehow drafty and musty at the same time, and has a perpetual leaky roof, but Amy does appreciate the grandeur of the front steps and the rows of large windows stretching across the length of the building facade.

Amy’s almost ready to walk out when the principal, Mr. Brogan, steps out of his office and calls her. She has to resist the urge to hug herself in an attempt to warm up, but she wants Mr. Brogan to take her seriously. She recounts the story of Colin harassing Sarah on the bus, while Mr. Brogan leans back in his chair, relaxed. He has thinning hair that’s halfway between brown and grey, pale skin stretched over his cheek bones, a full grey moustache, and solemn brown eyes.

“So Sarah’s belongings were returned to her?”

“Well, yes…”

Mr. Brogan nods. “It seems like everyone has learned their lesson in this situation. I can give Colin warning if you’d like, but it sounds like this won’t happen again.”

“Respectfully, um Sir...Mr. Brogan...Colin didn’t sound very sorry. And I don’t think he would have stopped if I hadn’t intervened.”

“You said you grabbed him?”

“Well, yes…”

“Amy, we have a strict zero tolerance policy for physical violence.”

Amy is stunned, and then, embarrassingly, she begins to feel her cheeks warm up and her throat close off, tears building in her throat.

“Now, I’ll let you off with a warning. But just because a boy is trying, unsuccessfully I might add, to flirt with a girl, doesn’t mean you have the right to be physical with him.”

Amy wants to say something. Anything. Wants to explain how Colin nearly kissed Sarah when she clearly was uncomfortable. Wants to explain how grabbing Colin felt like the only way he was going to pay attention. But nothing comes out of her mouth.

“Now I know you’re very involved here at school. I wouldn’t want to have to have to suspend you and impact your extracurricular commitments. Same with Colin—the school’s junior hockey team is undefeated and he’s the leading scorer. I think it’s best if we just leave the situation as it is.”

At this point Amy just wants to escape. So she nods, not daring to take a breath. Praying that her angry tears stay inside her head until she can step out of the principal’s office.

“Thanks for coming in here today Amy. It takes courage to stand up when you perceive something has gone wrong. I think we all learned some valuable lessons today.”

Amy just nods again, silent. Once Mr. Brogan opens the door to his office, she speedwalks away, breaking into a run once she reaches the hallway. She runs right into the bathroom, locks the stall door behind her, sits on the toilet, and starts to cry.

* * *

Jake’s house is always quiet in the evening, with just him and his mom. They’re eating dinner in front of the TV, and Karen has picked up pizza, which usually he loves, but tonight Jake’s not hungry. The Toronto Maple Leafs are playing his beloved New York Islanders, both teams skating in circles to warm up before the puck drops on the blue-lit screen of the television.

He picks at his pizza, pulling off a pepperoni slice and nibbling on it, trying to avoid his mom’s worried glances from where she sits on an easy chair across the room. Jake can’t stop thinking about Sam. Somehow he’s only able to repress his thoughts when he’s on the ice. Practice was fine, but all day at school he couldn’t get Sam’s face out of his mind. Dead. Murdered. He knows the right thing to do is come forward, and yet he’s pretty sure he would get to the police station and he wouldn’t be able to get the words out.

And of course, he remembers Hitch reassuring the team that the cops wouldn’t give them any trouble. He wants to believe that’s not true, but there’s a worry deep in his stomach that Hitch is right. And that shakes Jake to his core. Unravels everything he thought he knew about his life and his home and the game he loves.

“Jake, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“I didn’t see you at school today.”

“I was busy. I didn’t walk past the art room at all.” Jake crosses his arms. His mom sighs, and looks over the rims of her glasses at him. She has a smudge of blue paint on the side of her chin, but Jake doesn’t say anything. He just immediately averts his eyes, taking a too-big bite of pizza that he doesn’t want.

It’s not like Jake is blind to the parts of hockey culture that he doesn’t like. He watched Rosa punch The Vulture in the stomach after she overheard him call one of their team members a pussy. Rosa is happy to trade insults with the best of them, but that particular word provoked her immediate reaction. And if Jake’s being honest, every time he hears it thrown around on the ice, a little part of him cringes when he thinks about what his mom would say. Now The Vulture just ignores Rosa.

There’s the time all the players told Charles to ignore his concussion symptoms and he ended up not being able to play for a whole month. And their U14 coach who made Jake skate wind sprints every time he “said something stupid”. But all in all, Jake loves hockey. He loves the speed and excitement of the game. He loves that he has to pay attention to a million things at once—his positioning, his team members, the puck, the other team—solving problems from all directions.

He loves that it never feels like paying attention, it’s nothing like the agony of trying to focus on his math homework. It comes naturally, about as close to magic as Jake is willing to believe. It makes Jake want to work hard and take responsibility and be a good teammate and all the other things he’s pretty sure his dad would tell him make a good man if his dad hadn’t abandoned them when he was seven. The rush of scoring a goal or winning a game is great, but it feels even better to share it with a team.

Coach Kelly is tough, and he’s certainly not Jake’s favourite person. His discipline can feel over-the-top and his expectations frustratingly high. But he talks a lot about responsibility. About being the guys that the little kids can look up to. He makes them show up early to the yearly town clean-up at 8am and pick litter off the side of the road. He makes them volunteer their time at skating clinics and lectures them about drinking responsibly and making sure they always have a designated driver. He tells them if someone’s ever in trouble, they can call him any time.

Now Jake wonders if Coach Kelly would actually help them out, or just help cover up whatever had happened. _I’ll destroy you_. That’s what he said. That’s what will happen if Jake isn’t able to somehow bury all these thoughts.

He’s vaguely aware that on the TV the Islanders have scored. Usually, that’s cause for an over-the-top celebration, but instead, Jake sits on the couch motionless. His mother’s paintings hung around the room feel like they’re judging him. _What else am I supposed to do?_ Jake wants to say to them.

The TV replays the goal. It’s a John Tavares goal tipped in off a slapshot from the point, and since he’s Jake’s favourite player usually this would call for double the celebration. But Jake barely even blinks.

“Jakey, are you sure nothing’s the matter?”

“It’s nothing, Mom.”

“Is it a girl?”

It’s not a girl, but his mom’s suggestion still makes Jake’s brain jump to Amy. Talking to Amy was the only good part of today, although he never was called down to the office to give a statement about the incident on the bus and so he’s not sure if his offer even meant anything to Amy. He has known Amy Santiago for ages, ridden on her bus for as long as he can remember, and yet he also feels like he also saw her for the first time today, when she stood up and grabbed Colin away from the girl he was terrorizing.

Maybe it’s because he wishes he could have the guts to stand up like that. Instead he’s picking at his pizza and trying desperately to bury his guilt within himself. Or else he’s idly fantasizing about confessing to the police without any real belief that he’d ever go through with it.

Maybe it’s also because she’s beautiful. He has no idea when Amy transitioned from an awkward brace-faced twelve year old to the gorgeous girl he talked to today. Even in the rain, her hair looked smooth and silky. She put her hands on her hips when she talked and once she complimented his goal, Jake knew he was a goner.

It’s not about a girl, but there is a girl. And that’s way easier to talk about that the guilt and confusion of Sam’s murder and the way Jake is no longer sure that he can trust the ground underneath his feet.

“Fine. It’s about a girl.”

“I knew it Jake. I can always tell these things.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbles.

“Do I know her?”

“Of course you know her. You know everyone. You teach at my school.”

“Just checking.” The way Karen shrugs her shoulders almost has Jake smiling. Nonchalant and amused at the same time. She takes a sip of her wine, though Jake can’t think of anything worse to have with pizza. It’s so quintessentially his mom, and no matter how much she may embarrass him with her hippy art teacher antics at school, he’s still glad for her.

“You should go for it. You need more confidence.”

“I have tons of confidence. I’m the best player on my team and that’s a fact.”

“You need more confidence off the ice.”

_Yeah_ , Jake thinks, _he really does._

His mom continues, “I’m sure she’s a lovely girl.”

Jake makes a noncommittal sound. He’s almost happy when the Leafs score, because it gives him a reason to change the topic. It’s a messy goal, borne out of a scramble around the net.

“Come on, that was goalie interference!” Jake exclaims, as the announcer on the TV says the same thing.

The ref stops the play and skates over to the side of the ice, pulling on a headset to confer with the video review room upstairs. They eventually declare it a good goal, which makes Jake so mad he jumps out of his seat. Usually his mom would tell him to calm down, but Jake guesses she’s just happy to see him closer to normal.

The rest of the game is exciting, and it’s almost enough to distract Jake. Certainly, the added overtime period is enough to distract him from the math homework sitting untouched in his bag. The Islanders end up winning in overtime 3-2 with another John Tavares goal, and Jake goes to sleep at night dreaming of playing star centre for the Islanders. It’s a nice, if impossible, dream, until Jake finds himself in the dressing room, the Islanders logo on the floor, and Sam’s body lying next to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little note about the time frame. This fic is subtly set in the early 2010s (Sarah’s knockoff uggs, Adele topping the charts, and Tavares playing for the Islanders), but I figured it was worth a mention in case people didn’t pick up on those ridiculously niche clues. The time frame isn’t really important for the understanding of the story, but it’s a fun fact nonetheless. 
> 
> Tell me what you think! Or come say hi on tumblr @feeisamarshmallow


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy is motivated when she finds out the truth of Sam's death. Jake and Amy cross paths again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks to [MediumSizedEvil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MediumSizedEvil/pseuds/MediumSizedEvil) for the beta!

Amy is still in a bad mood when she returns to work the next Saturday. Between Colin’s jackassery and Mr. Cassen’s casual racism and Mr. Brogan’s apathy, not to mention Sam’s death, she’d rather spend the weekend holed up in her room with her crossword puzzle book and the new Holst piece she’s learning on the French Horn. Amy’s never overly thrilled to make small talk with the hockey parents at 9am as they bring their children in to play, but she’s never unpleasant either. This morning she’s downright surly.

It’s as close to a beautiful day as it gets in March. The sun is shining through the windows in the arena lobby, and there’s finally a bit of heat behind the white-gold rays. It’s cold, but clear, and it finally feels like spring is just around the corner. Yet somehow the arena feels ominous.

On one side of her desk is Amy’s open biology textbook, but she’s not reading it. Instead she has a stack of university booklets. She’s still a year off of applying, but flipping through the glossy pages is a welcome distraction. She imagines walking down the streets of Montreal, hearing French and English mingling in the streets, studying psychology or biochemistry or linguistics in a cafe. McGill University almost looks like a castle—a world away from Althea.

Or if that’s too far, she imagines living in a cute little apartment near the University of Toronto. Maybe in a century home that has long been converted into an apartment. She’ll visit all the museums on the weekend and rank all the Caribbean food in the city until she finds cooking that reminds her of home.

Or if Toronto’s not far enough, maybe she’ll go to British Columbia. Get on a plane and fly straight across the country, make her home where the winters are mild and the ocean is next door and the trees grow tall and wide.

She’s still flipping through UBC’s university booklet when a man clears his throat in front of her. She immediately recognizes him as one of the coaches, although the fact that he’s dressed head-to-toe in Althea Avalanche Minor Hockey gear helps, too.

“Sorry, here’s the sign-in.” Amy hands him a sheet that was hidden underneath her stack of university booklets.

“Thanks.”

He nods and signs the sheet with a confident hand. The coach is followed by a gaggle of hockey parents, juggling coffees and a box of timbits and little sisters in princess dresses with winter boots and little brothers playing games on their Nintendos. They hand Amy a 20 dollar bill, and she quickly calculates the ticket cost and the change, and rips off tickets for them. The mother who takes the tickets is distracted, and barely looks at Amy. She has dyed-blonde hair, pink lipstick, and an Althea baseball hat pulled a little too low on her head.

It’s not quite time for the game yet, and the lobby space behind her desk is filling up with parents visiting and parents leaving and children racing around between everyone’s legs. The concrete block walls of the arena do nothing to absorb the sound and instead they bounce the cacophony of Saturday morning hockey back into Amy’s ears.

The pink lipstick lady—Amy thinks she should know her name, but she can’t remember—stands right behind Amy, and something she says cuts above the din.

“It’s just terrible.”

Amy figures they’re talking about Sam. The police announced last night there was no foul play, but it’s a tragedy nonetheless. She’s about to tune them out, when the lady continues:

“You know how Jennifer and her husband...I never liked them. But I never thought they’d go this far.”

“Well you know that their neighbours called the police on them last year,” someone else responds.

“Well you also know the Althea police. Unless there’s evidence too big to ignore...” A new voice.

They all laugh, but it’s stilted and uncomfortable.

“I wish I could do something, but what is there to do?” It’s the pink-lipstick lady.

“I just hope he’s at peace.”

And then the voices fade into the general noise as they drift out of earshot of Amy.

She’s shaking. The UBC booklet fallen on the floor by her feet. Maybe she’s just jumping to conclusions because of all the terrible events of the past few days, but if she’s not mistaken, those parents just alluded to the fact that...Sam was murdered.

A man comes up to the desk at that point, and Amy takes his money and gives him a ticket on autopilot. Even a week ago, Amy’s not sure she would have believed someone in Althea was capable of murder, but now she’s not so sure. _What is there to do?_ Amy’s not sure, but she knows that doing nothing feels worse. And if her principal, the police, the parents, if no one is going to do anything then damn it, it’s going to have to be her. Consider it her parting gift to her hometown before she jets off to a university far, far away from here.

She counts up the money early. Her hands are so shaky she keeps knocking over the piles of quarters. She leaves the desk nearly 40 minutes before her shift is supposed to end, and instead of walking out the arena door, she turns around and walks down the hallway to dressing rooms.

She has heard that Sam’s body was found in room six. Amy has no idea what’s she’s doing, but she’s got a rage fueling her footsteps and a logical brain that dictates that the scene of the crime is the best place to look for evidence.

The door creaks as she opens it, and shuts with a bang behind her. It cuts out the noise of the arena—the chatter and the crash of players hitting against the boards in the rink. She shivers. The silence feels ominous, like it has a physical presence looking over her. She rounds the corner so she can see all the benches around the perimeter of the dressing room. She doesn’t know what she’s expecting—maybe some leftover police tape? She’s certainly not expecting to see Jake Peralta standing in a daze in the middle of the room.

“Amy?” he says.

“Jake, what are you doing…”

Before she can finish, he bolts out of the room, eyes wide.

Amy stands there alone for a minute before she can’t stand it either. Jake’s presence is maybe the best clue she could hope for. But it’s not the one she wants.

* * *

Amy can’t sleep that night. She gives up around 3am, sits up in her bed, and turns on the lamp on her night table. It’s eerily still and silent, so every move she makes feels amplified. The paper of her notebook rustles as she turns to a new page, ands he cringes. She’s hoping that making a list will help her quiet her brain. She grabs her favourite and titles the page ‘How to Solve Sam’s Murder’.

At some point over the past three sleepless hours, she’s decided that she’s really going to do it. She’s going to solve Sam’s murder even if no one else cares. She’s tried to justify it to herself, and part of it is because she liked Sam and she misses him. But a larger part is that despite her threats to move away and never come back, she loves her hockey-obsessed hometown, and she doesn’t see how she could still love it and _not_ solve Sam’s murder. Or else, she reasons, it means that the things she loves are just a veneer for corruption and violence and she can’t stand for that. She just can’t.

Detective work is really just logic, and she figures she’s great at math, so it can’t be too hard. She writes ‘Goal’ and then ‘Gather airtight evidence of Sam’s killer to present to the police’ in her small, impeccable penmanship. Outside the window a solitary car drives past her window, but the way it pierces the silence it might as well be a jumbo jet.

Amy eventually falls asleep slumped over with her notebook open on her lap, after she’s outlined all the possible ‘Jennifers’ in town, all their children, and then noted who all played hockey. She’s narrowed in on Jennifer McMann, mother of none other than Colin McMann, who harassed Amy on the bus. Her daughter Lauren is a year older than Amy and an accomplished figure skater, and her other son, Tyler, plays U16 Boys A hockey in Althea. With Jake Peralta. The thought of Jake makes Amy feel flushed. It’s a whole range of emotions she desperately doesn’t want to delve into. Instead she draws an arrow between Jake’s name and Jennifer’s, which drifts sideways off the page when Amy loses her grip on the pen as she drifts to sleep.

* * *

Lauren McMann is in Amy’s chemistry class, despite the age difference, because Amy is taking Grade 12 chem a year early. Lauren is built like a figure skater—petite and graceful with long dark hair and porcelain skin. She sits a row and half in front of Amy, and while the teacher explains Hess' law for what feels like the millionth time, Amy tries to figure out a plausible reason to strike up a conversation with Lauren.

It’s a stroke of luck when their teacher assigns them lab partners, instead of letting them choose, and Amy finds herself standing too close to Lauren, trying to light a bunsen burner. They work in awkward silence for a while, until Amy finally blurts out, “Do you like murder mysteries?”

“What?” Lauren says, turning to look at her.

Amy falters. Maybe she’s not so good at this detective stuff after all.

“You know, like Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes…” Amy trails off.

“Um, not really. I don’t really read. I like movies better.”

“Oh. Agatha Christie is actually great, even if you prefer movies. Very easy to read.” She shakes her head to bring herself back on topic. Focus Amy!”

“Are you okay?”

“No...yes...no.”

Lauren looks confused.

“Okay, this is happening.” Amy takes a deep breath. “You know Sam from the arena. He was murdered. I’m trying to solve it.”

“What? No?” Lauren grasps a hand to her chest, a dramatic departure from her previous reserved nature.

“I have reason to believe your family may be connected to the murder.” Amy keeps her hand on her hip and tries to hold her eyes steady on Lauren’s.

To her surprise, Lauren’s eyes go wide and then her face crumples into tears. She lets out one sob and then runs from the classroom. That seems to be the reacion of anyone involved in this case—just run from whatever room Amy is confronting them in. Her teacher turns and looks at Amy accusingly. Part of Amy feels like she should go comfort Lauren, but mostly she’s just excited that Lauren’s reaction seems to confirm that her family had a hand in Sam’s murder. She wants to go meticulously record everything in her notebook, but first she has to finish this chemistry experiment without a partner.

* * *

Jake always feels a sense of eerie calm before he plays a big game. It's something about him that always surprises his coaches—he’s goofy and has too loud a mouth for his own good—but at game time he’s cool and composed under pressure. Today he welcomes the calm as more than a mental reset before a big game, but also as a reprieve from the endless weight of carrying around the truth of Sam’s death. He puts his shin pads on first, right then left. Socks. Pants. Skates. Shoulder pads. It’s a routine here’s had for years and he finds a deep comfort and more than a little superstition in it.

The mood is the dressing room is loud and boisterous. There’s rap music playing out of an ipod dock plugged into the wall. They’re up in their series against Wimborne, and they could win the championship if they win today.

“I’ve got a good feeling.” Charles says, putting on his own equipment next to Jake.

“Boyle! Don’t jinx it bud.”

“I forgot how superstitious you are pre-game.”

“Says the guy with a fucking rabbit foot on the rearview mirror of his car.”

Charles shrugs at that. He has this ability to shrug off any and all teasing, insults, and chirps. They don’t bother him, and most of the guys have stopped even trying to get under his skin, even in a friendly way. Charles is a small guy. He’s kind of clumsy and he’s not a pretty player. He should’ve quit years ago, but he’s also a grinder. He never stops working and he doesn’t make any trouble. He finishes every puck battle and every hit.

“How many goals you gonna score today?” Stevie says, on the other side of Jake, tying up his skates.

“Two. Their goalie is weak on the glove-side.” Jake is confident. There’s a fine line between confidence and superstition—believing they’re going to win the game is tempting fate. Knowing he’s going to score a pair of goals is just plain fact. He’s the best skater and leads the team in points.

“Hey Shillens! You know that chick you have a crush on?” Tyler McMann calls from across the room.

“Shut up, bro.”

“Fucking Amy Santiago. She thinks she’s a detective or some shit. Askin’ around about Sam.”

At the mention of Sam, the dressing room falls silent. The rap music pounding out of the speakers seems to increase in volume.

“What a bitch!” Stevie finally says, a little too loudly.

“She better back down, or else I might have to make her.” The Vulture chimes in, giving a little upward nod of confidence. Stevie and Tyler nod in agreement.

Slowly, the chatter starts up again, but all of Jake’s calm is gone. He pictures Amy’s face when she burst into the dressing room. He had thought that if went back to the scene of Sam’s death he might be able to quiet the guitly voices in his head. But seeing Amy there had only ignited them. Amy was so confident when she took a stand on the school bus. Suddenly his confidence in his goal-scoring abilities pales in comparison. He thinks about how shitty he’s felt over the past few days and how he’s tried to bury by throwing himself headlong into the end of their hockey season. Then he makes a snap decision, like he’s taking a onetimer shot on the net, and he elbows Stevie on the bench next to him.

“Dude, shut up. She’s not a bitch.”

“Ohhh Peralta. Do you have a crush on her too?” Tyler says.

“Who the fuck cares?”

“Watch it Peralta.” The Vulture says, nudging Tyler.

“She’s a better person than any of us. Just leave her alone.” Jake raises his voice.

All the players turn to look at Jake. Charles looks confused. Stevie looks stunned. Tyler looks scared. But all their eyes are trained on Jake.

“Don’t you dare get us kicked out of the championship. I’ll take down both of you.” The Vulture sneers after a moment.

“Yeah the guy who cherrypicks every goal and can never be bothered to come back past our blue line is gonna have the energy to take me out," Jake shoots back.

“You wanna go?” The Vulture stands up.

“You know what? Yeah, I do.” Jake stands up. He turns his shoulder to make wide eyes with Charles.

Charles mouths, ‘What are you doing?’ and Jake responds with an exaggerated, ‘I don’t know.’

But at that moment, Coach Kelly enters the room, with Rosa behind him to join them for their pre-game talk. Jake and The Vulture reluctantly sit down. Both The Vulture and Tyler stare daggers at Jake throughout their Coach’s talk.

* * *

Jake thought he was only going to have to deal with The Vulture, but over the course of the first period, the whole team save Charles and Rosa have been blocking him out. They’re smart about it too because they’re all _good_ players. They pass to him enough to make it not obvious, but if there’s another option that doesn’t involve Jake, they take it. He’s barely been able to get a shot in. He’s sitting on the bench, breathing heavily. His lungs hurt from the cold and he’s feeling more tired than he usually does. None of his usual game-time adrenaline has set in. He grabs his water bottle and takes a drink, trying to regulate his breathing.

On the ice, Rosa has a nice chance to tuck the puck into the corner of the net, the goalie too slow to come over to cover, but the puck takes an unlucky bounce on the goalpost and shoots back into the play. In the stands, the crowd reacts. A Wimborne defenseman picks up the puck and they start the process of getting out of their own end. The Althea team is tired and Hitch can’t catch up with the Wimborne player skating past him and instead reaches out his stick, hooking around the players ankles and tripping him up. The referee’s whistle pierces through the chilly air of the arena.

Coach Kelly sends Jake on for the penalty kill, as Hitch skates over to the penalty box. Jake wins the faceoff cleanly but Tyler’s attempt to clear the puck down the ice is intercepted by a Wimborne player. Wimborne takes the puck down the side, and around behind Althea’s net. When Jake skates to cover his zone, he realizes that Stevie is defending higher up in the slot than he should be, almost as if he’s trying to cover his own zone and Jake’s as well. Jake feels a rage boiling in his blood. He knows the team doesn’t trust him after his outburst in the dressing room. He sure as hell doesn’t respect them anymore, either. But if they keep playing like this they’re going to lose, and maybe it doesn’t matter in the scheme of things, but it does make everything feel worse. 

Sure enough, Jake’s not fully paying attention and neither is Stevie, and the Wimborne defenseman gets a shot away from the point that deflects off a few skates and into the back of Althea’s net. 1-0 for Wimborne. The period ends with the same score, but Wimborne adds a pair of goals in the second. The Vulture answers with one in the third, but ultimately Wimborne wins, forcing another game in their final series. Jake doesn’t score any goals. 

* * *

Rosa breaks her stick against the net when the final buzzer goes. The vibe is quiet and somber after their loss, with a rage bubbling underneath. The team is mad that they lost, but mostly they’re mad at him. There’s nothing worse than abandoning your team, especially in the playoffs. And even though the other Althea players were the ones who iced Jake out, no one sees it that way. Jake went against the code when he defended Amy. He gave them all reason to believe that he wasn’t going to keep his mouth shut about Sam’s murder and potentially get them kicked out of the championship.

Jake just wants to get out of there as fast as he can. He undresses and doesn’t say a word.

“Tough loss, Jakey,” Charles says.

_How are you okay with what happened?_ Jake wants to yell, but instead he says nothing. Nothing bothers Charles, but he doesn’t stand up for anything either. Jake sees the look of hurt on Charles’ as he stomps out of the room, but his mind is made up.

As he marches down the arena hallway, past the silver and green championship banners hung on the wall, he feels that same sense of calm wash over him as when he’s about to start a big game. He’s got to warn Amy Santiago of the mess that she’s about to get herself into. He’s done protecting his team at Sam’s expense, and Amy’s expense, and even his own expense.

His mom is waiting for him in the lobby.

“Sorry about the loss, Jake. You played good though.”

“No, I didn’t really.” He readjusts the hockey bag on his shoulder.

His mom looks at him with sad eyes, the same look she’s had all his life when he used to come home from school and cry and ask when his dad was coming to visit. But this time Jake wants to tell her that he doesn’t need her pity. Sure, he’s mad that they lost, but for the first time in days he finally feels a sense of peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a slowburn, folks! But I promise in the next chapter Jake & Amy finally interact for more than a few seconds. 
> 
> Tell me what you think! Comments feed my soul and help me edit and post new chapters quicker :) Or come say hi on tumblr [@feeisamarshmallow](https://feeisamarshmallow.tumblr.com/)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake tells Amy that his team knows about her detective work. Amy confirms another piece of evidence. Sparks fly between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks, as always, to [@MediumSizedEvil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MediumSizedEvil/pseuds/MediumSizedEvil) for the beta!

Amy has once again fallen asleep with her notebook open on her lap. On the page she has Jennifer McMann’s name circled in red, and scrawled above it the sentence ‘need definitive proof’. Her head lolls to the side, pens scattered around her legs. Her bedside lamp casts a pool of warm light on the floor, and her school textbooks are stacked neatly beside her bed.

There’s a clunk against Amy’s window. And then another one. A third one rouses her from her sleep, and she reaches groggily for her glasses on her bedside table. The fourth rock hits the window just as she’s opening the curtains and looking into the driveway below.

She has to shake her head to make sure she’s not living in some sort of romantic comedy or something, because Jake Peralta is standing next to her parent’s minivan. He's throwing rocks at her window, Althea minor hockey coat zipped up to his chin and a black tuque pulled down over his curls.

Amy makes a ‘what?’ gesture with her hands, then motions that she’ll come downstairs. She doesn’t want her parents to wake up, and she certainly doesn’t want to have to answer questions about why there’s a boy here to talk to her at almost midnight. She grabs her winter coat and hat, shoves her boots on her feet, and then silently slips on the front door.

“What are you doing here?”

“Aw, you do remember me.” Jake says, almost as if to himself.

“Of course I do. Why are you here?”

“Well, I was actually, how to put this, inspired by you.”

“What?”

“All will become clear, but I need you to follow me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Amy, I’m serious. I have…” He drops his voice even lower. “...info about Sam that I need to tell you.”

That stops any of the protests she has sitting on her tongue.

“You know Sam was murdered?” she whispers. Wind whips through the trees, rattling the branches. It makes Amy shiver.

Jake hesitates, then nods. That makes Amy shiver all over again. She knows that logic dictates she shouldn’t trust Jake Peralta. And detective work is logic. Jake knows that Sam was murdered, plus she saw him snooping around the scene of the crime. That puts him at the top of her suspicions. He could be willing to share information, but what if he just wants to shut her up?

Jake's Althea hockey jacket has a reflective stripe down the arms that reflects the streetlights. The Althea Avalanche logo is stitched onto his lapel—the same as the kids that tormented Sarah on the bus. The same as those who probably had a hand in Sam’s death. She shouldn’t trust him, and yet, she’s not sure logic can describe the innate sense she gets that Jake is sincere and safe and _good_. She remembers him chasing her down after the bus incident, about as opposite to Colin’s actions as you could get.

As if reading her thoughts, Jake motions at his beat-up station wagon parked on the road. “Do you trust me?”

Amy sighs. Her ears are burning from the cold even with her hat, and she makes a snap decision. A gut decision.

“I guess I don’t have a choice,” she says, as she follows him to his car.

The vinyl seats are cold when she sits down, and she can feel the chill seeping into her bones. His car smells like the inside of a hockey bag mixed with a sugary citrus scent like orange soda. When He turns the key in the ignition, Taylor Swift comes blasting out of the speakers. It makes her jump, and then laugh, tension melting from her shoulders. He turns the volume down with a violent swipe, his cheeks growing red in the glow of the streetlights.

“I can’t figure you out,” she says, allowing herself to get a little serious.

He turns off her street onto the main road, the blinker echoing throughout the car.

“And I thought you were a detective,” he responds.

“Who told you that?” Alarm creeps into her voice.

“That’s what I needed to tell you." Jake glances at her. "All the boys know that you’re on the case. It’s dangerous, you need to back off.” 

“How did they figure it out?” Her stomach sinks.

“Um, you told Lauren McMann that you thought her family _murdered_ Sam. Come on, Amy, you’ve lived in Althea for how many years, ten? You know how things work here. People talk.”

“Yeah, I know how things work here. That’s why I can’t back off.” She turns to look at him, even though he keeps his eyes trained on the road.

“You don’t know what you’re doing," he insists.

“Neither do you," she fires back.

“You have to trust me. Nothing good is going to come of digging around." Jake gives his head a little shake.

"I can't," she says.

For some reason, he starts chuckling to himself.

"What?"

"You're so stubborn." But he doesn't say it as an insult. He almost sounds endeared.

"Yeah, well, so are you." Amy meant to sound irritated, but instead she sounds amused.

“See, you do know me," he says softly.

They drive in silence for a while. They’ve driven out in the country, and maybe she should feel unsafe, but instead she feels a sense of instant security. Jake’s got one hand on the wheel, nonchalant, but the tenseness of his shoulders give away the seriousness of the situation.

“Jake, did you know Sam?” she says after a moment.

“Not that well. We called him Goofy Old Sam The Clean-up Man.” His voice is quiet.

“He always held the door for me when I left work at the arena. He collected Hot Wheels matchbox cars. He was a good guy, Jake. I can’t just let this go.”

“Okay.” He turns to look at her briefly.

“What?”

“I said okay. I want to help you though.”

She didn’t expect that response, although she’s beginning to believe that she shouldn’t try to pin Jake down into one category in the first place.

“Yeah, right,” she finally responds, sarcastic.

“I’m serious. I’m a great hockey player—I’m sure that means I’ll be a good detective too.” He’s joking a little now, almost flirting in a boastful sort of way.

She rolls her eyes.

“Listen.” He drops his tone into something more serious. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Sam, since I heard about his murder. I think about it all the time. More than hockey. I can’t get it to stop.” He sounds desperate.

Amy gives him a tentative nod. “So he was murdered. The poisoning was intentional, not accidental like the police said.”

She phrases it as a statement, but she’s looking for Jake’s confirmation.

He just nods.

“Was it the McManns?”

“I think so. I came in for practice the morning he was found. One of the boys let it slip that some of our parents had him murdered for threatening to expose them. I guess they were sabotaging the other team to help us win the championship.”

“Jake…” she whispers. Suddenly it all seems so real. Like Sam’s murder has snapped into a focus clearer than Amy thought possible.

“Coach Kelly sat us down before we went on the ice and told us he would destroy us if we breathed a word about it.”

“Oh my god.” She remembers her own days playing hockey. There’s a lot she misses about it, but she especially misses working as a team. That expectation that you have your team’s back. She tries to imagine how she would’ve responded if that pact of loyalty was warped and corrupted into keeping a crime quiet.

“Yup.” He forces nonchalance into his tone.

“That’s terrible,” she says.

There’s a beat of silence.

“So anyways, now I’m here. And I’m gonna get destroyed. So let’s do this.” His tone is upbeat, and maybe it should come off as callous, but instead she understands that he’s trying to cope with the tragedy the best he can. They both are. And somehow they’ve reached a common ground of exposing Sam’s murderers to the world.

He turns onto a narrow laneway in the middle of the countryside, and the gravel crunching under the tires pulls Amy back to reality.

“Where are we?”

Above them the stars are clear and bright against the dark sky. There are no lights around, only the headlights of Jake’s beat-up station wagon illuminating an old-style barn straight ahead of them, painted red with _Boyle & Sons_ in white across the front. A silo stands behind that, with a newer, metal driveshed to the side. There’s no farmhouse in sight, though. Instead there’s a large homemade rink on the front lawn.

“This is Charles’ family farm,” he explains. “They build a rink here every winter. I guess when I’m not thinking about driving I just sort of end up here. I’ll just turn around so I can take you back.”

“Or we could put it to good use." The words come out of her mouth before she has a chance to think about them.

“Are you saying…?”

“Look, if you’re going to wake me up in the middle of the night, confirm that people I’ve known for almost my whole life are murderers, and then drive me to the nicest outdoor rink I’ve seen, the least you can do is let me blow off steam here.”

“You wanna play?” He raises his eyebrows, impressed.

“I bet I can still outskate you.”

“Is that a bet, Santiago?”

Amy’s vaguely aware that she’s flirting with Jake now. But she doesn’t want to stop. She turns her head to meet his eyes, tucks her hair behind her ears and smiles.

“If you want it to be.”

For some reason Jake still has his hockey equipment in his car. By a stroke of luck he’s also carrying around his cousin’s skates, meaning to get them sharpened, and they fit Amy as well as she could hope. He leaves his car’s headlights on, aiming them at the rink. They sit side by side on a bench at the edge of ice, lacing up their skates.

He fishes a puck out of his trunk, followed by two hockey sticks. The stick is a little long for her, but she’s close enough in height to Jake that she can make it work.

She finishes tying her skates first, and steps out onto the ice. She takes a few strides, feeling out the ice beneath her feet. It’s nice for an outdoor rink—hard and fairly smooth with few cracks or bumps. She tosses a puck to the ice and stickhandles it back and forth. What she immediately notices, though, is that Jake shoots right. At first she tries shooting right too, but it feels awkward, and instead she flips the stick around so she can shoot left, even though the stick is now curved the wrong way.

She takes another lap around the rink, relishing the feeling of the cold air flying past her face. Jake steps onto the ice at the moment, sprinting across to her and stopping a foot away in a spray of snow.

“Not bad, Santiago.”

“Told you.” She gives him a little smile.

Amy finds herself staring a little too intensely at his warm brown eyes and his cheeks flushed red from the cold.

“I believe you said that you were a faster skater than me,” he says, flashing a goofy smile back, but there’s more than a hint of competition in his tone.

“I believe I did.”

“End of the rink and back?”

“You’re on!”

They’re neck-in-neck the whole way, both shooting up a spray of snow as they stop at the end of the rink and sprint their way back. In the end, it’s too close to call it anything but a tie.

Jake doubles over with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. “Impressive, I have to say.”

Amy pushes off on one skate, drifting closer to Jake.

“I told you.”

“You know I wish you weren’t as good a skater.” He looks up at her from his bent-over position.

“Why? You can’t stand that I’m better than you?”

“Well, yes. But also if you didn’t know how to skate, I could hold your hand and help you.”

“Maybe I wish that you weren’t as good a skater so that I could hold _your_ hand and help _you_.”

“Maybe we should just hold hands anyways.” He stands up straight and extends his gloved hand to her.

It’s absolutely quiet. The stars above them are brilliant, white, and cold-looking. Amy looks at Jake’s hand, then at his face, and back at his hand. It’s all so very strange. That she’s solving a murder. That she’s kind of falling in love. But in the middle of the night, the strangeness makes a sort of sense. She extends her own mittened hand towards his.

They discard their hockey sticks, and instead skate hand in hand around the rink, like an old-timey couple on a date. They’re quiet at first.

“Who’s your favourite team?” He breaks the silence.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re a Leafs fan.” She rolls her eyes.

Jake makes a face and shakes his head. “Never. Islanders.”

“Really? I would’ve pegged you as a Leafs fan.”

“I’m full of surprises.” 

“You are,” she says sincerely.

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“I’m not a big NHL fan, honestly. I follow the women's national team religiously, though. I was born in New Jersey, so maybe the Devils? Or maybe the Islanders just for Al Montoya.”

He looks confused, so she explains. “First Cuban-American NHL player?”

“We’ll take you as an honorary Islanders fan.”

They’ve stopped skating, but they’re still holding hands and standing a little too close. Time seems to slow down, and Amy knows what’s coming. And she knows she wants it too. She leans forward over her toes, feeling the blade of the skates bite into the ice. Little puffs of condensation leave Jake’s lips as he leans towards her.

Then, suddenly, coyote yips pierce the air. Jake whips his head around, and Amy almost stumbles over her skates. She’s heard coyotes a handful of times, but never this close or this loud. It’s creeping her out, and she suddenly feels all-too-aware of how late it is and the fact that they’re technically trespassing on Charles’ family farm.

“We’d better go,” she whispers to him. There’s no need to be quiet, but something in the air has shifted, and it feels wrong to make too much noise.

They drive back to Amy’s house in silence. It’s comfortable, but also flat-feeling. Any sense of excitement or tension was drowned out by the coyotes calls and their aborted moment. Jake doesn’t seem embarrassed or regretful, but he is quiet. Amy just feels disappointed. And a little frustrated, if she’s honest. But she’s also tired, and her mind is whirling from the events of the past few hours.

“I’ll text you tomorrow,” he whispers as he drops her off. “To make a plan.”

She nods, and pushes open the car door.

“And Santiago—” he puts his hand across the console to stop her from leaving, just brushing the edge of her coat.

He’s wearing gloves, and she’s got two other layers on underneath her coat, but it nonetheless feels like he’s lit her skin on fire.

“Thanks for listening. This was weirdly fun.” 

“It was.” She smiles.

When she sneaks back into her bedroom, it’s almost 3 am. She falls asleep and dreams of coyotes with warm brown eyes chasing her across an endless ice rink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my non-hockey b99 fans, Jake's favourite team is a nod to the Brooklyn setting of the show. Although the Islanders aren't really the NYC team (that's the New York Rangers), the Islanders did play at the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn between 2015-2020 (although this was a controversial move) before moving back to their arena in Uniondale on Long Island. 
> 
> Tell me what you think! Or come say hi on tumblr [@feeisamarshmallow](https://feeisamarshmallow.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything comes to a head when Jake and Amy spy on a parent’s meeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [@MediumSizedEvil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MediumSizedEvil/pseuds/MediumSizedEvil) for the beta <3 Thanks also to everyone who's commented on this niche fic so far, and especially to [@suspended-in-gaffa](https://suspended-in-gaffa.tumblr.com/) who lets me talk about hockey to her even though she couldn't care less.

It’s official. Jake is in love with Amy Santiago. His alarm wakes him up, the world still dark outside, and despite the events of the past few days, a slow smile creeps across his face. She’s fierce and funny and smart and a great hockey player. He can’t believe he had never really noticed her before last week. Losing his hockey game feels like a million years ago.

True to his promise, he texts her during first period. He hides his phone underneath his desk, and tells her to meet him to spy on his team’s executive meeting tonight, where all the suspect parents would be gathered together . Even with the whirlwind of his new crush on Amy Santiago, he hasn’t forgotten the sinking dread of Sam’s murder. Maybe it should feel wrong for the two things to exist simultaneously, but it doesn’t.

He stops by his mom’s art classroom at lunch, and finds her working on a painting, a sandwich in her other hand frozen midway to her mouth. Sometimes he forgets that his mother is just as absentminded and messy as he is. Her desk is cluttered with brushes, paints, and half-finished paintings. Her attendance sheet sits on the corner, unfilled, and upon a second glance he notices it’s the one for yesterday. He has to clear his throat to get his mom’s attention.

“Hi sweetie!” Karen says.

“Mom—” Jake looks over his shoulder, embarrassed.

Karen sets her paintbrush down on a napkin, takes a bite of her sandwich, and then puts it down too.

“What do you need, Jakey?”

“Nothing—just came to say hi.” 

“You never just come to say hi.” 

“Guilty as charged.” 

Karen looks at him over her glasses. 

“I need the car after school. Do you think you can get a ride home? I have to finish this group project and we need to go to the dollar store for supplies.”

It’s a risky lie because it has to do with school, and since Karen works at his school, there’s a good chance she’ll figure him out if he’s not careful. He’s expecting the interrogation that follows. It’s silly, but it almost makes him feel like a real detective—making up a lie to maintain his cover. Maybe when his hockey career is over he should become a detective. Or maybe he could become the world’s first hockey-playing detective. Like the Screech Owls, but adult, and real instead of fictional characters.

“For which class?” Karen asks.

“Biology.” Jake schools his face.

“What’s it about?”

“Genetics. That pea guy.” 

“With who?” 

“Amy Santiago.” He can’t quite stop his lip from twitching, and he starts to feel a warmth in his face that means he must be blushing.

“Ooh a girl!”

“Mom, stop!”

“Is this the girl?”

Jake sighs. If he gives her this, she’ll probably be more likely to agree to giving him the car. And he needs the car not to work on a school project with Amy, but to spy on the parents who orchestrated Sam’s murder. And he surely can’t tell his mom that truth, but maybe adding a little truth to the lie will help.

“Maybe.” Jake’s cheeks are burning and he’s sure they are as bright as the red paint sitting on his mom’s desk. 

“In that case, how could I say no?”

“Thanks Mom!” He holds his hand open for the keys. 

Karen leans down and fishes her keys out of her purse.

“Good choice. I like Amy. She’s a good artist too.”

“Mom!” He protests, but inwardly he files away the fact that Amy is an artist. He already knows she’s in band, because she was carrying an instrument case on the day he first spoke to her. She’s also a graceful skater, a good hockey player. A good detective. Tough. Funny. Beautiful. Is there anything she can’t do? And doesn’t it seem a little crazy that he’s pretty sure she’s falling for him too?

* * *

They park two blocks over from the arena to try and avoid drawing attention to themselves.

“So what’s the plan?” Jake puts the station wagon into park and turns off the ignition.

“I thought this was your plan!” Amy says. 

“You’re the real detective. I’m just like the cute assistant,” he replies.

“Very bold of you to think you’re cute.” 

She raises an eyebrow at him and all Jake can think about is how much he likes her.

“I’m cute about everything. I can be cute and a tough hockey player at the same time,” he jokes, framing his face with his hands. 

That makes her laugh, genuinely. She throws her head back a bit and smiles wide.

“So where do the parents meet?” she asks.

“In the room upstairs.”

““Do you think we’ll be able to get in there before they arrive?” she says, making her tone serious again.

“We have an hour, so I don’t think they’ll be there yet.” 

“Good. That means I can hide this recording device somewhere too.”

She pulls out an old iPod from her backpack. The screen is cracked in three different places, but it turns on when she presses the power button. 

“See, you even have the gadgets of a real detective!” He laughs, which makes her crack a smile again. 

* * *

The wood floor of the arena’s second storey is exceptionally creaky. Even though they’re the only ones up there, Jake can’t stop looking over his shoulder every couple of seconds, scared to be found out. Amy marches over to the table and chairs set up in the middle of the room, and gets down on her knees to attach the iPod to the bottom of the table.

The room really isn’t that big—it only covers part of the lobby on the floor below—but it feels cavernous. At the end of the room a bank of windows looks out over the ice surface. Above the windows hang yellowed photos of hockey teams from the 1960s and 70s, along with old, curling felt banners. At the other end of the room, fold-out chairs and tables sit next to an open doorway to a multipurpose kitchen. It smells different up here. The lemon scented floor polish is less noticeable, but there’s an underlying musty scent that reminds Jake of old kitchen sponges.

Jake’s standing by the door, keeping look out, and watching Amy struggle to put the iPod in place. It keeps falling off the underside of the table, and her body language is giving away her frustration—her shoulders tense and her movements growing more frantic. She’s still beautiful, though, and if he’s being honest, something about Detective Amy is actually even more attractive to him. 

Jake is lost in thoughts about Amy, and it takes him a moment to realize that someone is coming up the stairs. In a few seconds they’re going to turn the corner in the hallway behind him and enter this room. He curses under his breath. 

“Amy!” he whispers urgently. 

But she’s too far away to hear, or else too engrossed in attaching her iPod. Behind him, he can now hear faint voices alongside footsteps and the creak of the stairs. He looks behind him, and then looks back at Amy. Time seems to slow down as he calculates the best move—they can’t exit out the main door now. They could try to leave out the emergency exit, but it’s a staircase that leads down onto the rink and it’s unlikely they could slip away unseen with a practice taking place on the ice. It’s not unlike playing hockey, having to rapidly analyze a set of odds and make a split-second decision about the best play. Except in this case the stakes are a little higher than giving up a goal or a game.

The voices have become clearer as Jake sets his sights on a coat closet just behind the table. It’s risky, but it’s also their best shot. He runs over to Amy as quickly as he can and grabs her arm. She spins around, shock and then frustration flitting across her face. 

“They’re coming, we have to hide.” 

Realization dawns on her face. She sticks the iPod to the underside of the table one last time, starts recording, and then lets Jake drag her to the closet.

“Why are they early?” she whispers.

“I don’t know.”

Jake is just squishing in the closet behind Amy when her ipod falls off the table again and lands with a thunk on the floor. Now that they’re both hidden in the closet, all the confidence he felt has suddenly drained out of him.

“We’re gonna get caught,” he says frantically. He moves to push past her, but she puts her hand on his chest to stop him. Despite his fear, it sends a tingle all the way through to his spine. If they weren’t standing in a dark and musty coat closet, he’s sure she could see a blush spreading across his cheeks. 

“We can’t do anything now, we just have to hope they don’t notice,” she says. 

He nods, anxiety settling in his stomach. There’s no door on the closet, but it’s deep enough that they can hide around the corner of the doorway as long as they stand pressed up against each other. A few stray hangers left on the closet rod poke into their faces.

He hazards a peak around the corner, and sees that four parents have shown up—Rod and Susan Pembroke, Matthew Langdon, and Steve Hitchcock. They’re dressed identically in Althea Minor Hockey coats, pants, and baseball hats. Their voices are hushed and serious—too far away for Jake or Amy to catch their words—and their body language is stiff.

As the minutes crawl by and none of the parents seem to have noticed the recorder under the table at their feet, he’s able to exhale easier. 

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Amy whispers. 

“I guess I hope they’re confessing to their crime.” 

Amy hums and agreement. Jake is standing close enough to her that he feels her response, more than hears it. 

“It doesn’t feel real, and at the same time—” Amy says again, after a minute. 

“It feels way too real,” Jake finishes. 

“You know, usually I hate confined spaces,” Amy says. 

“But right now…” Jake prompts. 

“I’m actually okay.” 

He can feel the warmth of Amy where her torso is pressed up against hers. Her hair smells like flower-scented shampoo. He wants to tell her how much he admires her. He opens his mouth and then hesitates. But the dark intimacy of the closet gives him courage. 

“You know,” he whispers. “I’m obviously not glad this happened, but I’m really glad to be able to get to know you.”

He feels her shift like she’s going to respond. Suddenly, the sound of a chair squeaking across the floor makes them snap to attention. He hazards another look around the doorway, and then pulls back immediately.

“Someone’s coming…” he hisses. “We’re fucked.” 

“Well, I guess this is happening,” Amy says. 

He looks at her confused for a split second, before she grabs his face and pulls him into a kiss.

For a minute, Jake forgets everything. He forgets Sam’s murder. He forgets the dangerous situation they’ve gotten themselves into. He forgets the drama of his hockey team. His whole world has been reduced to the intoxicating feel of Amy’s lips pressed against his.

Then it all comes crashing back. Amy’s not holding back in her kiss, either, pushing her tongue in between his lips and running her hands through his hair. Jake responds by grabbing her waist and pulling her towards him. It’s a smart move, looking like they’re just two horny teenagers making out in a coat closet. And it feels amazing, but it also feels a little fake—it is a little fake—and that makes Jake more upset than he cares to admit. 

He doesn’t have time to examine his feelings any longer before Jennifer McMann reaches into the closet and finds them mid-makeout.

“Oh.” 

Jake and Amy break apart, and Jake doesn’t have to fake the embarrassment on his face. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Just um…” he tries to maintain the charade. 

“Snogging!” Amy says, too loud, and Jake cringes. 

For a second, Jake doesn’t think Jennifer is going to buy it, but instead she nods. 

“Young kids in love...I get it,” she says and leaves them with a wink. 

There’s a few beats of silence.

“Ugh that wink was gross,” Jake finally says. 

“That was a close one,” Amy responds. 

* * *

Once the parents have filed out and Amy retrieves her ipod, she and Jake book it back to his car without a word. Her head is spinning with everything that has happened in the past hour, but mostly about the kiss she initiated with Jake. It was just a cover-up—the only cover-up that would’ve made sense—but she still can’t deny the fact that there are very few hockey boys who she would willingly kiss in dusty arena closets.

And she can’t deny the fact that she wants to kiss Jake again, for real this time. 

Jake’s breathing hard when he finally sits down in his car. His cheeks are flushed from the cold and from the exertion, and his hair is curling wildly out the edges of his Althea baseball hat. It takes all of her focus to not just stare at his lips and remember the kiss. He turns the ignition and cranks the heat all the way up.

“Well,” he finally says, “let’s see if this all paid off.”

No mention of the kiss. Mostly Amy’s relieved, but she’s also a little disappoined. He hands her an aux cord and she plugs in the ipod. 

“Your car’s so old I’m surprised it even has an aux cord,” she says.

That makes Jake smile. It’s hard to believe that this partnership is only a few days old at the most generous estimate. Only yesterday she was questioning whether or not she could trust Jake, and now she’s pretty sure they’re detective partners or something like that. Not only does she trust him enough to hide in a dark, enclosed space together, she truly believes that Jake is a good guy. And he’s a seriously good kisser, even when he was caught off-guard.

The voices on the recording seem eerily close and clear—like the parents are sitting in the car right there with them. The conversation starts out innocent enough. They talk about the cold March weather. Someone asks about another person’s ailing parent. Then the conversation stops abruptly, and the sound of a chair scraping across the floor fills the car—someone else has arrived. 

_“Jennifer, what the fuck have you and Bill gotten us into?”_

“That’s Jennifer McMann, the woman who did it?” Amy looks to Jake for confirmation. He nods. 

_“Nice to see you, too, Rod,” Jennifer replies._

_“Look, no one knows. The police are about to close the case, and I can make sure that it stays that way,” says another voice._

“That’s Bill McMann,” Jake confirms. 

_“I don’t know, my son said that some girl at school is suddenly interested in Sam,” Rod says._

_“Some girl isn’t a threat. It’s the police we have to worry about and it’s fine,” Jennifer says._

_“Did you all forget that you agreed to this plan?” Bill asks, his voice rising._

_There’s a few beats of silence. The recording plays out the faint sounds of the hockey players practicing on the ice pad below._

_“And sabotaging Wimborne wasn’t our idea in the first place. What the fuck were we thinking, trying to give them food poisoning and messing up their equipment? Do you know how much more badly that could’ve backfired? Even more than Sam catching us in their dressing room? I’m telling you simple bribery would’ve been so much easier.” Bill’s voice is getting angry. He sighs, and seems to take a moment to compose himself before continuing. “But if we didn’t get rid of Sam he was going to expose us to the league. He was. And then all our hard work would be for nothing.”_

_“This is such a mess,” a new male voice says. It must be either Matthew Langdon or Steve Hitchcock._

_“Don’t forget, we’re not doing this for us. Everything we do, we’re doing for our kids, right Jennifer?” Bill says._

_“Mhmm,” Jennifer agrees._

_“Those boys deserve to win the championship and you know it. Yes, this got messy and after it’s all over we’re never going to talk about it again. But it’s fine. And it’s a sacrifice that had to be made,” Bill says._

_More silence._

_“So are we good? No one’s going to pussy out and tell the cops?”_

_“We’re good Bill, no need to get heated,” Rod says._

_“Good. Now what are we thinking about swag for when the kids win the championship? Matching jackets?”_

_“I was thinking new warm-up suits,” a new female voice says, Susan Pembroke._

Jake reaches out and slams the off button on his car radio. His hand is shaking.

“Oh my god,” he exhales. 

“We got it,” Amy says. He voice is quiet and shaky and she’s surprised by how much hearing the murder confession has frightened her. Even though Jake’s car is blasting heat straight at her face, she feels a chill right down to her bones. They’re so lucky the parents didn’t seem to recognize her, although faintly that fact offends Amy. 

“We got it,” he echoes, sounding shocked. 

Jake turns and looks out the windshield of his car, fiddling rapidly with the lanyard on his car keys. They’re the only car parked on this side street, in front of identical mid-90s detached houses. No one is outside. The street is as bare as the branches on the grey-brown trees lining the street. It all feels so desolate and devastating, and Amy feels like she has to say something. She wants the magic between her and Jake back. She wants an outlet for the dread and nervous energy sitting in her chest. 

“This is huge. This is….we can take this to the police. They won’t be able to ignore this kind of evidence if we make noise about it. This changes everything. This might even shut down the whole league.” 

“What?” Jake’s head whips around to meet her eyes. He looks hurt and angry and that catches her by surprise. 

“Well, that’s what we want right? Justice for Sam. Changing the system so that no one ever gets murdered like this again.” Amy’s trying to keep her voice level, but as she watches Jake’s face harden she feels anger and hurt build in her chest. 

“That’s not...I never wanted to take down the whole league.” 

“Well what did you think was going to happen?” 

“I don’t know...I…” he falters. “We could win the championship tomorrow.” 

“Do you really care about the championship after all of this?” 

“No...yes...I don’t know. Those guys are my friends, Amy!” 

“They’re murderers!” she yells. 

“Their parents are murderers, there’s a difference!” 

“Listen to you! You’re just like the rest of them! When it comes down to it, all you really care about is hockey and maintaining the stupid, hurtful, _criminal_ status quo just because it suits you. I can’t believe I thought you were different. I can’t believe that I liked—” 

There are tears running down her cheeks now. Jake’s face is white, and he looks just as sad as he looks angry now, his jaw clenched so tight he looks a few seconds away from popping a vein.

“You liked what, Amy?” Jake’s voice cracks. 

“It doesn’t matter.” She opens the car door and gets out. 

“Wait, Amy, I’m sorry.” 

She gives him a little nod. She’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but she also doesn’t have a good feeling about it. 

“So can I take my recording and turn it in to the police?”

Jake looks pained. “I’m—I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that.” 

“That’s what I thought.” She wants to snap, but instead she chokes on her tears. She slams the door and buries her face in her coat so Jake can’t see her tears as she walks away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me what you think! (Sorry about the cliffhanger lol). Or come say hi on tumblr [@feeisamarshallow](https://feeisamarshmallow.tumblr.com/).


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